1. William Wright, whom GW recommended for a commission in his letter of 21 Aug. 1754 to Gov. Robert Dinwiddie, was now a lieutenant stationed on the Holston River with orders to patrol the colony’s southwestern frontier. On 12 July 1755 Indians killed him and two members of his little detachment on Reed Creek, a branch of the New River. See Allan Macrae to GW, 3 Sept. 1754, and Robert Dinwiddie to GW, 11 Sept. 1754.

2. Dinwiddie’s speech to the Virginia General Assembly at the opening of its session 1 May 1755 appeared in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg) of 2 May 1755, probably the source of Macrae’s copy. Much of this brief speech Dinwiddie devoted to an attempt to persuade the assembly to appropriate a large sum of money for the support of Braddock’s army. “The Operations of this Year, will, doubtless, be attended with considerable Expence,” Dinwiddie warned, “and without an adequate Aid from the Colonies, I dread the Consequences!” Of the several lesser matters touched on by the governor, one in particular probably attracted GW’s attention. “The poor Men who suffered at the Meadows with Colonel Washington,” said Dinwiddie, “I recommend to your Favor, as they were disabled in the Service of their Country” (JHB, 1752–1755, 1756–1758 description begins H. R. McIlwaine and John Pendleton Kennedy, eds. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia. 13 vols. Richmond, 1905–15. description ends , 231–32). Compensation for these wounded soldiers was approved within the next few weeks, as eventually also was some money for military defense. See William Fairfax to GW, 28 June 1755.

3. “All Accts from Engld agree in the great Preparats, makg [for war],” Dinwiddie wrote Gov. Arthur Dobbs of North Carolina on 5 May 1755. “35 Ships of the Line in Como. & more daily expected that I think we are in earnest, & they say our Ministry insist strongly in havg the Treaty of Utrecht properly comply’d with” (ViHi: Dinwiddie Papers).

4. 9 May 1755.

5. Ann Fairfax Washington Lee, Lawrence Washington’s widow, lived at her new husband’s house, Mount Pleasant, in the Nomini Creek neighborhood of Westmoreland County.

6. Aquia Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River, was in Stafford County on the Northern Neck. Dr. Valentine Peyton of Overwharton Parish, Stafford County, died in Nov. 1754. These lands may have been part of his estate. The task that Colonel Fitzhugh undertook for General Braddock probably concerned one or more of the things that Braddock was urgently seeking for his army: recruits, provisions, horses and wagons, or money.

7. Capt. Edward Brice Dobbs (1729–1803), son of North Carolina governor Arthur Dobbs, arrived at Fort Cumberland on 30 May with a company of about 80 recently recruited North Carolina provincials. Young Dobbs served several years as a lieutenant in a fusilier regiment of the British army before taking a leave of absence to accompany his father to North Carolina in 1754. After the North Carolina General Assembly approved the raising of troops for the Braddock expedition in early Jan. 1755, Governor Dobbs appointed his son a provincial captain and gave him command of the colony’s little contingent on the grounds that there was “no person in the Province who had been Officer of the Regulars and understood anything of discipline” (Arthur Dobbs’s answers to resolutions of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1760, in Saunders, Colonial Records of North Carolina description begins William L. Saunders, ed. The Colonial Records of North Carolina. 10 vols. Raleigh, N.C., 1886–90. description ends , 6:280–310). During the march to the Monongahela, however, Captain Dobbs contracted an ailment that temporarily impaired his eyesight and prevented him from taking an active part in the campaign.